


these words that i write in the margins

by charmify



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Prompt Fic, bucky finding a family among the avengers, bucky finding an outlet for his emotions, slight steve/bucky if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmify/pseuds/charmify
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is not good at communicating, but then, he never knew you could communicate like <em>this.</em></p><p> </p><p>In which Bucky discovers slam poetry and finally understands what it means to connect to other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these words that i write in the margins

**Author's Note:**

> based off of this post from the wonderful imaginebucky blog: http://imaginebucky.tumblr.com/post/85154003080/imagine-bucky-working-on-coping-with-his-violent
> 
> The slam poem Bucky discovers is a real thing, and I suggest watching it when you get to that part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnTWiLvLL0A
> 
> what is sentence structure what are these periods you speak of (this came out more like a stream of consciousness than anything with actual syntax, so bear with me)

Bucky is not good at communicating.

He never had to be. Hydra told him what to do, and he did it. If he needed clarification on something, to be more effective at the job, he asked, and they told him. That was it. They didn’t need him to be communicative; they needed compliance, and functionality. Like a machine.

He was never allowed to ask about his past, either. He was never allowed to _think_ about his past. Most of the time he didn’t have to. Hydra had birthed and raised him; it was his mother, his teacher, his home. But sometimes on a mission something would set him off – the hairstyle of a passing woman, a hat on display in a shop front, a World War II exhibit in a museum – and he’d get this _feeling_ , like he’d seen it before, and he would almost remember something, some image at the corner of his mind, a voice too quiet to hear, and he’d ask questions, and then they would put him under again, and when he woke up encased in metal he didn’t remember anymore.

He stopped asking questions. He learned to push away the memories when they came, to hate them, because ignorance was better than being reset, like a faulty machine. He didn’t _want_ to remember.

But then Steve came into his life and gave him a name, an identity, a life. And now Bucky is confused and frustrated and hopeful and lost, led by the hand like a child by this man who shines golden like the sun and only makes Bucky feel more like a black hole in comparison. He can ask questions now, as many as he likes, but it’s hard, because he’s bad at communicating, and because James Buchanan Barnes does not feel like _him_ yet – more like a long-lost relative remembered through photographs and stories, secondhand.

Steve has pictures of Bucky from the old days, things SHIELD procured for him after he woke up, and Bucky looks at the man in the photograph, standing at attention in his military uniform, all ramrod-straight but still exuding confidence like a drug, he’s trying to keep his face straight for the picture but the corner of his lips turn up anyway like he’s seconds away from a smile. And then there’s another, him and Steve, and Steve is still tiny, like he says he was before Erskine turned him into a super soldier, he’s several inches shorter than Bucky and about half as wide, and they’re both laughing, Steve’s clutching Bucky for support and Bucky’s got his arm slung around Steve’s thin shoulders and he’s winking at the camera, all mirth and protectiveness over this little golden boy, and the real Bucky, the not-quite-Bucky, stares at that wink like it holds the secrets of the universe, trying to imagine himself ever having been that happy.

He can barely see himself in these pictures, and Steve suggests tentatively that maybe if he cut his hair – but Bucky shuts down at this, feels the familiar burn of hostility rise up inside him, and Steve backs off, because he knows not to push Bucky. Steve’s only trying to help, but Bucky feels the unknowing selfishness of that request hit him like a sledgehammer, because Steve doesn’t want _him_ , he wants the best friend he had as a child. He wants the old Bucky, the _better_ Bucky, not this broken, poor excuse for a copy. And that makes Bucky want to tear off this name, this caricature of a life, to run out of this place breaking things as he goes, to leave and maybe make a new name for himself away from expectations. But people would get hurt if he did that, and he’s not just talking about Steve – sometimes Steve and Natasha are the only things stopping him from killing the next person who looks sideways at him, and he wishes he were exaggerating but he _isn’t_ , and he doesn’t want to be that person anymore.

He wants to be better, for Steve, for _himself_ , he wants to be the Bucky of Steve’s photographs, but it’s hard because on the best of days he feels his inadequacy squeezing him like a straitjacket, and on the worst days he’s curled up in a ball on his bed, every muscle tight because he can’t let himself move, if he moves all the violence and horror and wrath locked inside him will come pouring out, and he _hates_ that part of himself, he has nightmares of losing himself and coming back into his mind to find blood on his hands and Steve’s broken body at his feet and he wants to tell Steve what’s wrong, wants to make him understand because Steve _cares_ , he looks at that puppy-dog look on Steve’s face and _knows_ he cares, and Nat cares too and she understands him better than most, but he can’t tell them, he doesn’t have the words, he’s not supposed to talk, machines don’t talk, they just do their jobs, but what even is his job anymore?

They tell him he should take up a hobby, like Steve’s drawing, something to let out his emotions, but Bucky scoffs at that and shrivels inside. The only thing he’s good at is killing.

And then, one day Steve’s showing Bucky some cat video on YouTube, and Bucky’s pretending to be amused because Steve’s happy when he thinks Bucky is happy, and then Steve leaves and Bucky surfs videos for a while, just clicks random links in the suggestions bar, enjoying the mindlessness of baby videos and makeup tutorials and American Idol clips and then somehow he finds himself watching this video called “Zora Howard – ‘Rage’” and it’s something called a slam poem and Bucky finds himself sitting up straighter, face inches away from the screen, listening harder than he’s listened to anything because the first line was pulled from his own heart.

_And what will I build with this rage, my mortar?_

It’s about racism, but parts of it feel like it was written for Bucky and Bucky alone, even the lines about blackness resonate with him because he wears his darkness around him like a second skin whether he wants to or not, the darkness that others can see, that makes them want to cross a street when he walks by. And every line about rage, about violence and how it builds you up until it is your identity and your support and the cytoskeleton in your cells maintaining your shape, they vibrate in his bones.

_…I’m afraid the earth will open its mouth to swallow me. It will be as if I never ever was…_

_…It’s a scary thing to disappear inside your rage…_

_…I fear I may not exist when the morning comes…_

_…Dragging me down and holding me down at the same time, these used-to-be boys…_

Steve is a used-to-be boy, Bucky remembers, Steve with his matchstick limbs and shattered-glass smile, Steve who would take on bullies twice his size and that’s still true, that hasn’t changed, but Steve isn’t a boy anymore, he’s taller than Bucky and wider than Bucky and he doesn’t need Bucky’s protection anymore, and Bucky isn’t thinking about photographs or stories, he _remembers_ , he remembers pulling Steve off the ground in an alley because Steve got himself into a fight again, he remembers the pride and the despair of clapping for Steve when he brings them all back from the brink of death, marching into the camp with that red and white and blue uniform of his, _let’s hear it for Captain America!_ and Bucky couldn’t be prouder but he’s breaking a little inside because his friend doesn’t need him to chase off the bullies for him anymore.

_This rage, my figure-frame encasing, this rage, my doing and unmaking, that without which I’m chalk-dust, or after-ash, or dark matter, I don’t hardly matter at all-_

The last line leaves his ears ringing:

_Without this rage to define me, when morning comes how will they find me? It will be as if I never ever was._

He is trembling, he is shaking in his chair and his breaths are shallow and uneven, because there are memories in his brain that he didn’t know he had, they’re not much, they’re like screencaps of a life he’s still not entirely sure he ever lived, but they’re more than he’s ever had to hang on to, they make him think that maybe he really did exist before he was born out of metal and pain in the bowels of Hydra. And the rest of it, those words that reached in and touched his soul and he didn’t know words could _do_ that, how it is that someone else can put into words the feelings he’s been struggling with for so long when he can’t?

Bucky is not good at communicating, but then, he never knew you could communicate like _this._

He spends the rest of the afternoon watching more slam poems, searching for them until his Google history is full of broken phrases, “slam poem” with an emotion after it, or a concept, the dregs he pulls out from his heart and types into the search bar because maybe, just maybe, someone has written about them too.

The next day he asks Steve for a notebook, not like one of his sketchbooks, ones with lines for writing. He’s grateful that Steve doesn’t ask why, just goes out and buys one for him, not a flimsy two-dollar ringed notebook from Office Max but a real journal, leather-bound. Bucky doesn’t ask why he went to so much trouble, because he knows, he can feel it in the tender way Steve hands it to him, the hopeful, open look on Steve’s face as they make eye contact before Bucky hides his feelings by turning his gaze to the lines on the cover of the journal. “Thanks,” he mutters, and Steve nods and still doesn’t ask why.

The first poems he writes are awful, _awful_ , a child could do better, and Bucky tears them out of his journal in rage until crumpled pages full of scribbled-over writing litter his room. He’s pretty sure they end up in other areas of the Avengers Tower, too, under couches and behind wastebaskets where he missed when he tried to throw them in, but still nobody pushes him to explain what he’s doing, not Nat when she hands a balled-up paper to him in the hallway, not Bruce who silently picks up the one by the basket and puts it in, not even Tony, who knows everything that happens in his tower and is by far the nosiest of the group. They all wait for Bucky to tell them, and give him his privacy, which makes Bucky more grateful than he can say, even if he does overhear a snippet of conversation between Nat and Steve about “maybe he’s finally found something that works for him” from Nat and “I’m happy, I just wish I knew what it was” from Steve and Nat’s “he’ll tell us when he’s ready” in return.

For a while he thinks he’ll never tell them, because these are so bad, he _hates_ them, how do you even write about your feelings, this is stupid, and he wants to give up but he doesn’t because there are moments when he thinks it’s working, and those moments don’t quite go away even after he’s scribbled over them with black lines of frustration. And as the weeks pass he crosses out fewer and fewer of his poems, his journal starts filling up, and the words are dark and hurtful sometimes and bewildered and lost other times but they’re _his_ , they belong to him and he understands so much better now that he sees them on paper, these emotions he could never navigate before, the poems feel like a road map of his soul and wow, when people talked about outlets he never knew what they meant but it makes so much more sense now.

And with his blackest thoughts thrown onto paper where they become just marks on a page, less potent, less powerful, he can talk to people. He can be closer than six feet away from someone without feeling like he’s going to be attacked, he can smile at Steve’s jokes and it’s real. Slowly he realizes that the others in the tower are _people_ , not threats, not shadows of a life beyond his comprehension. Bruce has this really dry sense of humor that Bucky would never have expected from him, and he lets Bucky watch his experiments. Clint’s ridiculous, Bucky wants to punch him half the time, but he’s also honest, and he’s always up for sparring with Bucky when he needs to let off steam. He’s also way smarter than Bucky would have thought, he doesn’t go showing it off like Tony or radiating quiet brilliance like Bruce, but he can do insane math in his head and he sees the world like a schematic and he _gets_ the things Bucky can’t quite articulate, somehow, maybe because he knows what it's like not to be in control of your own head. Tony’s an asshole but he never complains when Bucky breaks his stuff, and he must have told JARVIS to give Bucky anything he needs because JARVIS talks to Bucky a lot more than he talks to the others and it helps, somehow, to know that he’s never quite alone even in his own room. Thor isn’t there much and Bucky doesn’t really understand him when he is, he’s too loud and open and hearty for Bucky to grasp, but he’s friendly and affectionate and only ever greets Bucky with enthusiasm, which is weird but not bad. Natasha is a lifesaver, at first he’s embarrassed and awkward around her because he did kind of shoot her that one time, but she doesn’t blame him and she knows exactly how to help when he’s upset. And Steve…Even if the weight of Steve’s hope almost crushes Bucky sometimes, it’s not Steve’s fault, Steve is devoted and caring and patient and Bucky already knows that he would give Steve anything he asked for, if he could.

He wants to thank them but he still doesn’t really know how to talk to people, so he writes it down, leaves notes in the margins of Bruce’s books thanking him for his patience and understanding, sticks post-it notes in Natasha’s room where she’ll find them, all about how much she means to him, her with her calm control whenever he can’t handle his own existence, her with her understanding, the way she drags him outside sometimes so they can drive dangerously fast on the highway and let the wind hit their faces. He ties bits of paper onto Clint’s arrows, scribbled poems of friendship and stupid jokes only Clint will understand. He even, nervously, slides a page under Tony’s door, and the next time Tony walks past him he claps him on the shoulder and gives him a nod and that twists something inside of Bucky, that silent gesture of solidarity, and it hurts in a good way.

And Steve…Bucky steals Steve’s sketchbook and fills the margins with poems, writes all around Steve’s drawings until there isn’t any free space on the pages, it’s all full of words of devotion and thanks and love and so much apology, he’s so _sorry_ for what he’s put Steve through, he’s sorry for becoming an enemy, he knows it isn’t his fault but he keeps remembering the way Steve looked at him back when Bucky didn’t know he was Bucky, and it breaks his heart every single time. But there’s something beautiful, about Bucky’s words and Steve’s drawings all in the same place, crowding each other, different ink on the same page and they’re such different styles, Steve’s careful pencil sketches and Bucky’s harsh black handwriting, but somehow they still seem right next to each other.

It feels just a little bit like paradise the first time Steve and Bucky sit next to each other, Steve drawing and Bucky writing, and sometimes they both glance over at each other’s work, not to pry, just a peek, Steve’s as interested in how Bucky writes and Bucky is in how Steve draws, and it’s really hard at first because Bucky is so self-conscious about his writing process, it makes him twitchy thinking about someone watching him work, because he _has_ to go to dark places to make the words come out right and he worries about how that must look on the outside, but Steve doesn’t say anything, doesn’t question him, he’s just _there_ , and the sound of his breathing lulls Bucky to a calm place as he writes.

It’s the most nerve-wracking thing he’s ever done, deciding to perform one of his poems. There’s a barrier, still, between the written and spoken word, he can articulate dreams in his poems but he can still barely manage a “good morning” some days, but he wants to, he’s written this poem for all of them and he wants them all to hear it. They’re all in the common area, Steve and Bruce sitting on a couch, Clint perched on the arm of the chair Nat’s sitting in, Tony leaning against a wall pretending to work on his tablet instead of paying attention except he glances up at Bucky every three seconds to check if he’s ready yet, Thor looming over everyone in a plaid shirt that barely fits him. Bucky swallows, his palms are sweaty and for a moment his mind is a blank white wall of _this is stupid, god, I can’t do this, I’m going to forget the whole thing, it’s going to sound ridiculous, why is this happening_ , but then Steve smiles at him, all unquestioning belief, and Bucky straightens, tries to look like the confident man in the photograph, clears his throat, and begins.

It’s a poem about heartbreak, about wandering in a world entirely out of his control, about being born from a metal womb time and time again. It’s about a light in the darkness, about being lost and then, miraculously, _found_ , it’s about being overwhelmed by realizing not everyone is either a master or a target, the world isn’t black and white, there’s red hair and a blue uniform, there’s red and gold metal and purple arrows and yellow curtains of hair and a lot of green. It’s about not having to be defined by rage, because there are other emotions even stronger, hope and love and gratitude and that itchiness in your eyes like your whole soul is about to brim over the edge of the confines of your body and get all over everything and learning that it’s okay to leave tracks around the world, that not every mark has to be a scar. It’s about heartbreak, and how heartbreak is good because it means you still have a heart and if you’re very, very lucky you’ll find someone to sew it back together.

He doesn’t notice their reactions while he’s speaking, he loses himself in the rhythm of the words and what they mean. He doesn’t cry because he’s practiced this too many times to be overwhelmed by its emotion, but by the end he’s trembling as hard as he trembled after watching that first poem, because that took so much out of him, that was the hardest thing he’s ever done but all he feels is a shaky sort of relief. And then he comes back to himself and looks around and the room is deadly quiet, nobody’s moving, even Tony’s forgotten about the tablet in his hand, they’re all staring at him and for a moment he panics, thinks, _I fucked up, shit, I must have been awful, what do I do_ , and he opens his mouth to say something, anything, some stupid joke because this silence is suffocating.

But then he notices their faces. There are tear tracks on Steve’s face, Tony’s blinking rapidly, Natasha keeps swallowing, Bruce is wringing his hands and Clint is just staring open-mouthed at him. And then Thor starts clapping. It’s like a thunderclap in the silence, and Bucky startles, and then everyone is clapping, they’re all standing up and applauding and Clint’s standing on his chair and whooping and it’s completely ridiculous, they’re grown adults acting like children at a circus, but Bucky can’t talk around the sudden lump in his throat, he shuffles his feet and touches the back of his neck and he can feel the blood rushing to his face, he’s just kind of standing there basking in the glow of their emotion and he can’t look at any of them because if he does he knows he’ll start crying –

And then someone is hugging him, and he looks up in time to see Steve’s face pressing against his shoulder, and then they all come over, Natasha and Clint and even Tony, and Thor rushes into them so hard they almost fall over. Bucky’s in the center of the biggest group hug he’s ever encountered, they’re crushing him with their love, but he forgets to feel claustrophobic, forgets that people touching him makes him want to lash out, forgets all of that because he’s never felt so included. He’s laughing and crying at the same time, and Steve is whispering _I’m with you till the end of the line_ in his ear and Natasha is smiling radiantly at him and somehow Tony’s hand manages to find Bucky’s other shoulder and clap it the same way he did that one time.

And Bucky knows that when he goes back to his room his journal full of darkness and violence, pages of harsh words and all the pain of his past, will still be there. Those words aren’t going to fade away any time soon just because of a group hug, and he doesn’t want them to, because they make him who he is just as much as this moment does. But with this kind of love and – he thinks the word with all the wonder and awe of an orphaned child – _family_ surrounding him, he thinks that maybe when he turns to a new page, blank and pristine, the next words he writes will be a little lighter.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you guys so much for the kind comments! if you guys want to keep up with me and see more of my writing, you can find me at elfeyedlegolas.tumblr.com :)


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